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a journey detailing my do-it-yourself MBA

FOBS: My progress so far

As part of the grading scheme, students of the FOBS class were expected to carry out five peer assessments of the final projects in which we applied the strategists toolkits learned. The points were awarded based on the following rubric:

Analysis of competitors

Analysis of environmental trends influencing the industry

Analysis of industry structure and dynamics

Analysis of organization’s capabilities

Assessment of sustainability of competitive position

Articulation of a clear set of recommendations

Synthesis of analyses into a compelling argument

Use of data to support arguments

Strength of strategic logic and reasoning

Flow and organization of report

Each student could select any organization, provided it was not the subject of one of the course cases (e.g., Google, Apple, Piaggio). For those who were interested in working directly with an organization, the FOBS team solicited entrepreneurial ventures, small businesses, and non-profits to participate through a partnership with Coursolve.org to create a special forum where organizations and students can meet up.

The purpose of the analysis was to assess the current competitive position of the firm and to make recommendations on how to improve that position. The audience for this report was the CEO or President of the organization, and as such the report had to be concise and to the point.

I chose Eveready East Africa as the focus for my analysis. I was interested in analyzing what this East African behemoth could do to save itself from folding due to untimely self-reinvention. Having being a monopoly for a long time, owning one of the biggest production plants in Africa and having an extensive network of distributors has done nothing to slow the hemorrhaging of money in losses. I presented its competitive positioning and did a Porter’s five forces analysis in my previous post and gave recommendations on possible ways forward. My peer-assessment grade was 74.